Cryptid Chronicles: Robert O. Bowers' Campfire Tales and Unexplained Encounters

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Well come to the live journey with curve power podcast what I have you guys at teach motivate and inspired. Today's guest is Robert O. Bowers. Robert is a author, a self-published author, a storyteller, and an outdoorsman whose stories are real life experiences about the things that happened to him while he was working outdoors, hunting, fishing, and spending time in places where things don't have a clear explanation. Rob started writing at the end of his retirement after spending 43 years working. Now he's doing it full time. And he loves all things cryptic. So we're going to be talking to Rob about his books and everything that he's up to and gonna be up to. So Rob, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Glad to be here. Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Well, I'm 62. Um I live in northwest Oklahoma. And like you mentioned, I spent 43 years working for ODOT, Oklahoma Department of Transportation. And back earlier this year, at the end of January, I retired. And I started writing in I believe it was the fall of 2022. We were all uh family and friends, we were camped out at a local lake, Canton Lake, and the uh the weather was not cooperating with what we wanted to do. It was it was kind of cold and windy and rainy, and so we were sitting around the campfire telling, and I started telling stories. And my nieces and nephews kept telling me, Uncle Rob, you need to you need to write some of these stories down, put them in a book. So that's what I did that evening. I we got back and got back into camper. I got out a tablet and I started writing. And by the time we went home from the lake, I had about eight stories. And then I I think I did four more, wrote four more, put them all together, and my niece made a cover for my for the book, and I published it on Amazon, and got really good feedback from the stories, and so much so that I decided I would write another one, and then I wrote another one, and then another one. So there's there wound up being four four volumes of Campfire Tales from Uncle Rob and got really good feedback on those. And after that, um I retired, and I still wanted to write. I had still had the writing bug, but I was pretty much out of stories, true stories that I thought were good enough, you know, to be included in the in the in a book. So I turned to fiction. And I had I had some stories kind of bouncing around in my head that had been there for a long time, so I started writing it. So I'm writing fiction now, and and I'm really enjoying it.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Well, have you ever experienced something while while fishing it or working out doors that you can't quite explain?

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Oh, many times, many times, and a lot of those stories made it into my books. Um I know one time uh my buddy Dale and I. It kind of helps sometimes if you have some quirky friends, that's what I call them, who would uh a lot of and they're in a lot of my stories with me. Dale was Dale is probably in uh he's probably in more of my stories than anybody else. He was my age and we had a lot of the same interests. And Dale was one of those guys that was always if I wanted to go do something, he would always load up and say, let's go. So one night we were we were fishing on a creek and we were out on a sandbar, we had a campfire, we had a we had a Coleman lantern with us, and it was pitch black, and we're just a fishing, and we're not catching much. We're catching what we call bullheads, yellow cat, mud cat, and they weren't very big, and we were actually discussing just giving it up and either moving to down the creek to a different place or just going home. Like I say, it was late, it was probably after 11, it was summertime, but all of a sudden something started dive bombing us, and whatever this was, it was big, and I could hear like the wings flapping, and I could you could feel the air off the wings when it got dove close to us. I never saw it. Dale was Dale said he saw it, and he swore it was a pterodactyl, and I'm like, you know, I'm laughing at, but I'm I'm I'm ducking just like him. I'm like, eh, it can't be a pterodactyl, those things are extinct. And Dale swore that it was a pterodactyl. The only thing I saw was once over against the brush and tamaracks at the edge of the creek from the firelight, I saw the shadow of a big winged something. But that didn't really tell me much, you know, because shadows are so exaggerated, you know. The so it was hard to tell what it was, but Dale swore it was a pterodactyl, but whatever it was, it did not want us there for sure. And so we reeled up, grabbed our stuff, and we left. And we're in my truck, and I'm driving home. Now, as if that wasn't weird enough, the night got even stranger. We uh we're driving home, and I'm driving down this lonely dirt county road, and I came over this little rise in the road, and there ahead of us, like right at the edge of my headlights, was this lady dressed all in white, long dark hair. She was standing right on the edge of the edge of the road. And I'm thinking, you know, what's she doing way out here? There's no houses around, there's no vehicles in sight. So I slowed way down and I pulled over, and I went, but when we went by her, I was doing maybe 10 miles an hour, and she had long dark hair and it hung down over her face and you know, partially obscured her face. And as we went by slowly, Dale or watching her, we're watching her out the the passenger side window, and she just kind of turned and kind of watched and followed us, but she didn't just turn her head, she like turned her whole torso, and there was just something odd about it. Well, I stopped and Dale, he's just freaking out. He's like, What are you doing? Go, go, get us get out of here. I'm like, Well, I want to check on her, you know, what's she doing out here in the middle of nowhere? So I put my truck in the reverse and I back up and she was just gone. Like, where'd she go? Where'd she get off to? So I get out and I look and I don't see her any place. And I holler, you know, hey, you need some help. And she was just gone. And I went to the fence on both sides, and you know, it was just a barbed wire fence, wheat fields on both sides, and there was no place for her to go. Um, it didn't make any sense. And I I couldn't see her climbing over that five-wire barbed wire fence and that long white, whatever it was she had on, like a night dress or a nightgown. Uh, there was just it just didn't make any sense. So eventually I got back in the truck and Dale's like, Thank God, let's get out of here. So I'm saying, Yeah, I'm with you. That was just creepy. I don't know where she got off to or who she was. So we get I drive back to town and I tell Dale, I said, I'm gonna go up to the courthouse and report this to the sheriff's office. And he's like, No, don't do that. So why not? And he said, Well, they'll think you're nuts. I said, No, they're gonna think we're nuts because you're going with me. So I made him go in there with me. And so we go into the sheriff's office and I'm telling the dispatcher my story, and this deputy came out, and he was standing there listening to us. And when I kind of finished the story, he said, Well, I'll I'll go out there and check on her, you know, see if see if she's around. Maybe she, maybe you guys scared her, maybe she was hiding somewhere, and you know, well, there was no no place for her to hide. But so he left. And as soon as he left, the dispatcher looked at us and she said, You guys aren't the first ones to see her. Like, we're not. What's that mean? And the dispatcher lady, she said, Well, there we've had several people come in and report that they'd seen a lady that looks just what you're describing out in that same area. And I was like, that's just strange. What the heck? So a few days later, I meet up with Dale. He worked up at the local Chevy garage, and I meet up with him again, and you know, we asked each other if we'd ever heard anything back from the sheriff's office. Neither one of us had. But then Dale says, uh, you know, the guys up at the garage, I was telling them what happened that night, and they were telling me that lady was a ghost. I'm like, a ghost. He said, that's what they say. And they say that uh lots of people have seen her, and they even have a name for her. They call her Mona of the Plains. And I was like, Mona of the Plains? Why? He said, Well, they told him the story was that she was some lady, like a pioneer type lady, that her family and her were like massacred by plains Indians back in the day, and she like haunts that area, and on like still nights out in that area, you can hear her out there on a prairie moaning. And I'm like, Come on, Dale. He said, Well, that's what they said, and I said, Yeah, but come on, and he's like, Well, where did she go? I'm like, I don't know where she went. He goes, See? She must have been a ghost. I'm like, Okay, well, you know, I didn't I didn't believe in ghosts, I don't know that I do now, but I don't have any other explanation, so that's what I'm sticking with. And since I I wrote that story as in my second Campfire Tales from Uncle Rob book, I can't tell you how many people have read the story or heard me tell the story at like a book signing or something, and people from the area say, you know, I've seen her, my my mom and dad seen her, my brother seen her. So it's it's just really strange. And one one buddy of mine, I heard him one time telling another guy a story about this Mona the Plains, this lady in white that I called her. And I'm listening, his name was Mac, and I'm listening to him tell these other this other guy about her because Mac grew up in that in that out in that area. And I I'm listening, and so I tell Mac, I said, I I think I think my buddy and I seen her one night and tell him the story, and he said, Well, it's a it's a good thing you stopped. I said, Well, why is that? He said, Well, the stories say that um if you don't stop, she'll appear in your back seat. And I was like, Well, yeah, I'm glad I stopped. And if she appeared in my back seat, she better know how to drive because I'm getting out. But it's just been crazy how many other people and other people that people knew had seen apparently the same ghostly type lady in white. And people have asked me too, you know, did she well did she look like an apparition? And I said, Well, not really. I mean, she just looked like a solid lady. I mean, but her hair hung down over her face where we really couldn't see her face, but there was something creepy about it, and Dale knew it immediately. And apparently I'm a slower, I was a slower learner than him because I I genuinely thought she was some lady that needed some help. But um, yeah, that was just that's just one story that was just creepy, and come to find out lots of other people had experienced the same thing in the same area.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Well, tell us a funny or unexpected story from your years working at Odit. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but at ODOT, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Um I'll tell you a funny story with Odot. I uh the first 12 years of my career with Odot, I was in on the traffic crew, which was the sign crew, the paint crew, and then there for a part of that time the bridge crew was part of the traffic department too. But one time a buddy of mine named Alan, we were out working way out in Cimarron County at the far end of the panhandle. We were up north of Boy City, and we were up there working, it was summertime, it was hot, and the the Cimarron County crew there, they were working up there on that same road, they were north of where we were. Alan and I, we were about done for the day, and we had stopped at this little roadside park up there, and we're getting a drink out of our water can on the truck, and we got back in the truck and we hear the guys on the radio hollering, Bill, come back, Bill, come back. And we thought, well, what's going on there? Somebody took off, and then we see this ODOT truck coming, and he goes by on the highway, just lickety split, headed back towards Boy City, and he's dragging a jackhammer by the hydraulic hoses, and he just on town. So, and Alan and I we were laughing, like, what the heck? So the next morning, we go eat breakfast, and then we go out to the maintenance yard before we headed out to do our thing, and because we'd spent the night out there, that's not the county we were based in. We were the we worked the whole division. So we go out in the shop, and here's this hydraulic jackhammer laying up on the bench, and it looked like somebody took a grinder to it. It had been, you know, Bill had drug it all the way back to the yard, and we were laughing. And the guy I said something to the guys on the crew, and they said, Oh yeah, it got to be quitting time. And when it gets to be quitting time, Bill just goes to the yard. And I guess the guys, one of the guys was still hammering with the jackhammer when Bill got in the truck and took off. He jerked it out of his hand and away they went. So and and in Boy City, they have a square kind of in the middle of town, and the courthouse sets in the middle of the square, and the highway runs in a circle all the way around it, and you have to circle that courthouse until you get to the get to the road that you want to take. And so he had to circle like three-quarters of the way around this courthouse in the square there before he headed east on the highway to get back to the yard, which is way on the east side of town. And we were just imagining people, you know, in vehicles, on the sidewalks, in the businesses or whatever, uh, seeing this truck down the road, dragging this jackhammer by the hydraulic hoses and wondering what the heck. So it was it was pretty funny.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

What motivates you to keep writing now that you uh actually writing full time now? What keeps you motivated?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Oh, that's a good question. Um I think I just really enjoy it, and I enjoy the feedback I get from the people who read my stories, and it's not about making money, you know. Like most independent authors, we don't make a heck of a lot of money off of our off of our works, but I enjoy it, gives me something to do when I'm not hunting and fishing, of course. And it's the feedback that I get from people who have read my stuff and tell me that they enjoy it and enjoy the characters that I created, or you know, uh, that just means everything that somebody actually enjoys, appreciates the stuff that I'm writing.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Well, why do you feel like people are so fascinated by things like Bigfoot and other cryptids?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

I think people are fascinated by mysteries, and we just have a innate curiosity and a need to know. I think people want to know answers and they want to know if these things are real. You know, there's there's as many different theories about what some of these cryptids are as there are people, I think. I mean, everybody kind of has their own opinion. I certainly have mine for most of them. Some of them I have no clue, but who knows? Maybe one day we'll find the answers. But I think people are just naturally curious and really just want answers, and maybe they've seen something and want to know what the heck that was in some cases, and other other, you know, other people are just captivated by the stories, and you know, we're just curious by nature, so and we want answers. We want to know is this some animal that's supposed to be extinct that is somehow survived without people finding remains, or or is it something just totally undiscovered, or you know, uh there have been stories about a lot of these things going back hundreds of years. So and maybe in I'm sure in some cases there's some misidentification, but other times, I mean, I know I've had some experiences that uh I just can't explain. So I know in my case, I I just have a curiosity. I want to know what the heck they are and how they got here. And so I I think that's the majority of how the majority of people are.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

What is something that people misunderstand about writing or becoming an author?

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Oh I think I think maybe people think that we make, especially independent authors, you know, we make lots of money off of our off the stories that we write. And it may be in some cases, but uh the vast majority of independent writers that I am familiar with, that I have communicated with, we make a little bit of money, but for the most part, that's really not why we're doing it. I mean, that's always nice when you're getting a little a little compensation for your hard work, and it is hard work. Um, but it's a lot in my case, it's a lot of fun too. I I enjoy doing it. I enjoy I enjoy creating characters and in my fiction stuff, I try to I'm trying to incorporate like Native American folklore in in some of the cryptids that I'm writing about. And I enjoy that part of it, doing the research and trying to incorporate, you know, the the legends, the folklore. And then I of course I put a little twist in it, you know, that's my own little unique variation of what could possibly be out there.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Well, what advice would you give someone who feels like it's too late to start writing?

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Oh, it's never too late. Um I started I started like say back in 2022. I'm 62 now, so um it's never too late. And don't let anybody tell you that you can't do it. it no nobody really knows um but don't be afraid to try um if that's your dream to write and publish a story a book go for it you never know um i'm living proof of that so i would say don't let anybody dissuade you um give it a shot if that's what you want to try if that's a dream or in my case it was just kind of by kind of a lark kind of by accident I decided I'd give it a shot and look what's happened I've got seven books that's been published so um yeah don't let anybody tell you you can't do it and I I think it's important too most independent authors we can't afford a professional editor um get you a circle of friends or family who will read you you know you could you can send your stuff to as you write it and get some feedback get some critique on what you're doing and this kind of helps you shape your writing you know it just because you wrote it and it makes sense to you it may not make sense to somebody else that picks it up and reads it so it's nice to get a little feedback you know but yeah don't be afraid to give it a shot um there's always some anxiety of when you're you know trying something new and I certainly had it and still do a little bit but yeah if that's your dream go for it reach for the sky tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of well I am about two-thirds through another book um I put I wrote a fiction book called Have Dog Will Travel and it's about a a young 12 year old boy and when he's that age all he wants to do is go fishing and he wants a dog but his parents won't let him have a dog they don't think he's ready but they go they go uh camping and are gonna go fishing at this lake in southeast Oklahoma and they finally his parents tell him that evening that he can finally have a dog you know that they're gonna go they're gonna start looking and you know they think he's old enough and responsible enough to have a dog and so he's just ecstatic over that. Well around the camp you know around the camp that night they hear some strange things they see a few strange things but eventually they all crawl into a tent for the night you know to sleep and something comes into the camp that night a creature and the dad he thinks it's a bear so the only weapon he has is a bowie knife that was passed down to him that belonged to his father and his grandfather so he grabs up the bowie knife and goes out of the tent to run this bear off well it's not a bear and this thing attacks and his mother and father are killed and he's wounded and but he escapes and the story is about him growing up moving back to that same lake when he's grown he finally gets his dog a very special dog that helps him on his quest to find this creature and get his revenge and then after that book I I uh I wrote a prequel to it it's called have Dog Will Travel Valley of the Shampy and it's a prequel to Have Dog Will Travel it it takes place in the 1830s 18 up to 1840 which is after the Texas Revolution and it's about the first owner of the Bowie knife and how he gets it and he acquires a dog of his which is a wolf dog hybrid and he has a uh some friends that help him along the way but and for those who don't know shampy is a Choctaw native word one of their words for Bigfoot so um and then I'm currently working on a sequel to have Dog will travel called Devil's Canyon and it's back about the boy his name is Randall Talon and his dog and his friends uh still got his Bowie knife of course and there's I'm building some mythology some data on the history of this knife but basically the have dog will travel is it's gonna it's kind of a series kind of about the Talon family and how down through the generations they keep encountering these cryptids and up unto the current which is Randall and his dog blue so anyway that's what I'm working on right now and it's been a lot of fun doing a lot of research on the folklore and the legends and kind of incorporating that into the stories. Well so people can keep up with everything that you're up to they'll add your contact info well all my books are on Amazon so you can you know if you're interested in the books you can search for my name Robert O. Bowers or you can search for the book titles um uh Campfire Tales from Uncle Rob volumes one two three and four um the fiction books the first one I did was Red Eyes at Black Mesa then there's Have Dog will travel and then Have Dog will travel Valley of the Shampy um I have a Facebook page it's under my name Rob Bowers uh people can contact me there close this out with some final thoughts maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on any final thoughts you have for the listeners oh not really I just you know I'm enjoying retirement and fortunate enough that I'm able was able to retire and I'm living the dream I'm hunting I'm fishing I'm playing golf I'm writing stories I'm doing podcasts like with you today so hope people enjoy enjoy my stories and people I think people need to enjoy the outdoors more use it as a place to uh get away from the get away from work get away from the office get away from the hustle and bustle get out in the fresh air and enjoy nature and the environment and it's a good place to go just reset you know you can get out and just forget about everything put your phone down and just enjoy what's going on around you in the outdoors and get some peace of mind and there's always interesting things going on out there in the world especially outside you get animals and insects and fish and birds and people around you doing things and you'll be amazed if you just take the time to observe and enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Absolutely and I definitely appreciate you taking time away from your hunting and fishing to share with my listeners and uh listeners you know go go check out Uncle Rob's books on Amazon and uh keep up with everything that he's up to get the new book when it comes out and please be sure to follow rate review share this episode to as many people as possible also to keep up with all things living the dream episode releases sign up for the newsletter if you haven't done so you can go to www.curveball337.com leave me any kind of review or suggestions that you might have for the show and please share the website and the show to everybody you know thank you for listening and supporting the show and Rob thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining me thank you for having me on it's been fun thanks for having me on to tell some of my stories I appreciate it thank you very much for more information on the Living the Train with Curveball podcast www.curveball33 living the training